


A Hymn of Scale and Stone

by hellstrider



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Buckle the fuck up, Dragonborn!Jon Snow, Dragons, Fantasy, Forsworn weirdness, Forsworn!Tormund, Gen, I will protecc, I'm a slut for Alduin, M/M, Magic, Mercenary!Jon Snow, Odahviing is my bb, Prophecies are hard, Prophecy, Rituals, Rune Magic, Silver-Bloods - Freeform, Skyrim - Freeform, Skyrim AU, Slow Burn, Sort Of, This is gonna be a big one folks, Violence, Witchcraft, and mean, finally adding that tag!, plot heavy, u know like skyrim
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-04-24 06:06:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19167343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellstrider/pseuds/hellstrider
Summary: Arya was right; he really did have the luck of dead men, didn't he?





	1. One Mistake (Is All It Takes)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! Welcome to my massive, sprawling Jonmund Skyrim AU! Just so y'all know, I've no idea how long this monster will be, but I have it all plotted out. I'm hoping to update twice a month. Let's see if my brain agrees.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An arrest; an opportunity.

\---

The blood on his hands is slick and still hot. Eltrys’ face is pallid and grey, and all Jon can think is that the poor Breton’s child will be born fatherless.

Rough hands wrest him from the ground and a solid fist forces the air from his lungs. Jon gags and gasps, doubling over as one of the guards says, “unfortunate, that. Had a new babe on the way, too. Sick little fucker, aren’t you, Snow?”

Jon bares his teeth as the guards snicker and wrench his arms back, binding him with iron manacles that bite and burn when they drag him towards the stairs. Eltrys is going cold on the floor, his blood pooling around him, glassy eyes unseeing and Jon – Jon should have known it would end like this.

“Mance did this,” he spits, “the _King in Rags_ – “

“You think we don’t know?” one of the guards demands, and Jon hisses when a rough hand tangles in his thick black hair, pulling his head back until he can see the yellow of the guard’s teeth, smell the ale on his foul breath.

“Had a nice little deal with Thonar and Mance going until you stuck your nose into it. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to take it up with the King in Rags down in the mines. He’s quite eager to meet the infamous bastard of Winterhold.”

Jon feels his blood run cold. The guard shoves him roughly away, hard enough he nearly pitches to the ground, and terror begins to seep through him as his heart launches up into his throat. He might’ve been able to work his way to freedom in Cidhna Mine, but if the King in Rags awaits him – there’s no escape, not for him.

 “Maybe if you’re lucky, he’ll just take your tongue,” one of the guards says, sounding far too giddy; “you suck cock with that pretty mouth, Jon Snow? Might save you – well. Most of you.”

He grits his teeth until his jaw burns as the guards laugh and guffaw. Markarth becomes a blur around him; he’s numb to the core, numb of fear and anger, mouth dry. The King in Rags tried to kill him once, in the open streets where Jon had the upper hand. He’d let Dryston go, let him run back to the King’s little spy. If he’d been harder, he thinks – if he’d been braver. Of course, the King in Rags would probably have sent worse than Dryston.

He could fight them. He could fight and spit and kick and make them work for it, make them call the rest of the mercenaries from their barracks and take him down on the street instead of on his knees in the pits. Jon itches and pulls at the manacles and one of the guards hits him hard across the back of his head, making his vision briefly tunnel.

“None ‘o that, Snow. You ain’t got the fuckin’ guts to try it. We’ll bloody you up and send you to the King either way.”

 _Catelyn would be pleased_ , he thinks bitterly, _she always knew you were born nothing, and you would die nothing. It’s why she sold you to the Silver-Bloods before your father was even cold in the ground._

Cidhna Mine opens like an Oblivion gate along the western wall of the mountain-city. The black, gaping maw leads down into a wide, rickety stairwell and all Jon can smell is blood, metal, and piss; the clatter of mining doesn’t stop even at this hour, nor do the screams and the shouts, the bellows and the wicked laughter.

He’s never dared set foot in the mine, not as one of Silver-Blood’s mercenary guards – they called them Crows, down in the mines, and to kill a Crow was a mark of honor amongst the prisoners that bled silver beneath the streets of the stone-city. He’s heard tales that one man in the mines kept the fingers of the Crows he’d killed; they called him the Clipper in the barracks.

Clip a Crow’s wings, he’s all but dead. Can’t fight without his fingers, and if a Crow can’t fight, Silver-Blood puts him down and feeds him to the dogs. Jon’s belly twists as they shove him onto a platform above the mine proper below, a shaft as big as the great hall of the Jarl’s palace. There, they strip him under the watchful gaze of an Orcess with a jutting jaw and massive tusks.

“Sorry, Urgoza,” one of them grunts, tossing his sword – his mentor’s sword, his most prized possession – into a heap with his cloak on the floor, “he’s for the King.”

The Orcess grunts. “Too small anyway,” she says, leering at him. “No use for little birds in the mines. Send Mance my regards, boys.”

They take his black leathers and shove him into ragged linens that reek of death and stale stone.

 _Fight them,_ comes a voice from within him when they take the manacles off, stronger and darker, but still his own; _open your mouth and scream. Make them work for that blood, Jon Snow._

The Orcess looks like she wants him to try it. Her fingers caress the pommel of her mace like a lover; she wants to put him down, wants to see what his blood looks like and what color his eyes will turn when the light goes out.

 _Live, little wolf._ This new voice sounds like his father’s, warm as the hearth, and Jon’s throat burns with angry tears. _Put your head down, and live. Your teeth will stay in your mouth to bite down another day._

Jon shudders and swallows hard as they pull his hands back and his chance is lost, the cold iron biting into his skin once again. He meets the Orcess’ gaze with all the defiance he can muster and her lip curls into a snarl.

_Live, little wolf._

It’s frigid as the Orcess’ eyes in the mines, even though the air is thick with the black smoke from the endlessly burning torches along the walls. His lungs burn, and his skin is peppered with gooseflesh. One of the guards shoves him from the platform hard enough to send him to the ground, still bound in iron so he can’t break the fall.

He bites his lip and blood washes over his tongue, the pain that cascades down his body briefly blurring his vision. The guards drag him up and he stumbles, trying to get his bare feet to cooperate as they slip over the gravel-strewn ground.

The stairs down to the mines are slippery with age, the wood worn down beneath thousands of boots. Jon tries not to look over the rickety railing and tries to move fast enough the guards won’t get impatient and send him tumbling down. The bottom of the main shaft is scattered with groups of men and women of all races, from Orcs to Khajiit. A group of Dunmer shift into the shadows as the guards descend, and a few battered-looking women huddle closer, some clutching stones in their hands.

It’s lit by torches dotted over the vast, circular walls of rough-hewn stone, but some groups surround small fires made from the pieces of broken barrels. Corridors sprout off from four points of the main shaft, the sounds of pulling silver from stone echoing down through the wide caverns. The stench of unwashed bodies is sour on the air, mixing with the tang of blood and the musk of sex.

A few cells line the walls. Jon doesn’t linger over them as the sounds of fucking grow loud from within the iron cages, and his mouth burns with the vulgarity of it. Eyes turn to follow him when they reach the bottom of the stairs and Jon doesn’t meet any of them, keeping himself small as the guards prod and shove him towards the northernmost corridor. There are piles of bones here and there, horribly human, and Jon’s stomach churns when the reality hits him.

 _That’ll be you soon,_ he thinks, cold and hot all over, _you’ll be forgotten in this mine, soul wandering through silver. You’ll never see Sovngarde or your father ever again; all you ever were was an unwanted bastard, and unwanted is how you’ll stay._

Jon knows he’s about to die even as he prays and pleads to live, the memory of his father's voice urging his heart to beat. He doesn’t piss himself, doesn’t cry out, or weep. Anger crests in his gut and he breathes fast and hard, tries to think of the exact shade of red of Sansa’s hair, or the warm brown of Bran’s eyes. He tries to remember what Robb’s laughter sounded like, what his face might look like now. Did Arya still have Needle? Would Rickon ever get taller than him?

He thinks of Winterhold, of the vast plains of snow for which he was named, of the mountains and the rivers and the wolves, the wolves that he wished he could run with whenever Catelyn was cruel. Jon Snow, at the end of it all, thinks of home, and wishes he’d never seen that damned Forsworn in the market, never followed his damned curiosity to the shrine and into the tangled web of Eltrys’ fucking conspiracy.

Jon Snow thinks of home and refuses to weep as they march him through a winding tunnel through the mine, coming to a vast chamber with a single cell dug into the far wall. Four stakes bearing stag’s skulls mark the walls like a compass, torches burning above them.

The King in Rags awaits him but it’s the man standing guard at the cell that commands all the attention in the cavern as he pushes away from the wall and emerges into the firelight. Jon’s stomach bottoms out, and again the guard grips his hair, pulls his head back until his neck stings.

“New meat for you, Giantsbane. Might have fun with this one before Mance digs into him, yeah?”

The Forsworn called Giantsbane ignores the guard as he sidles across the vast cavern; he moves like a sabre-cat, all controlled muscle and sheer presence, and his gaze is twice as deadly as any wolf’s. His eyes are winter-blue and there’s a hunted, dark edge to them as they flicker over Jon from beneath a severe, arching set of brows.

His hair is long, tumbling in thick waves over his massive shoulders and barrel of a chest; it’s fire-red, brighter than even Sansa’s, laced with braids in the Forsworn way, each clasped by bone-beads. His bushy red beard is likewise braided into a taper beneath his chin.

Giantsbane doesn’t look more than forty winters, but he could be more than eighty and no one would be any the wiser; his tapered ears are longer than a man’s but shorter than an elf’s, adorned with rings of beaten gold even here. Claws sit in the lobes of his ears, tugging the skin as wide as Jon’s thumbnail.

Jon’s only ever met two half-elves before, and they were both courtly women, adorned always in finery and silks from the Summer Isles. This man looks like he’s more comfortable in blood than in cloth, looks like he could bite down through Jon’s skin and break his bone with ease.

The elegance of his face is at odds with his severity, from the lupine sweep of his sharp nose to the imperious arch of his cheekbones. His sun-worked skin gleams with the faintest sheen of Mer gold; part High Elf, then. He’s never met a full-blooded High Elf, but the tales Sansa always adored said the elves of the Summer Isles kept the sun beneath their skin, no matter how far they strayed from the paradise of their homeland.

The other half of him must be Nord; he’s hairy and coated in bulk, just like the men of Winterhold were. His ragged tunic is open almost to his navel, revealing a muscle-bound torso covered in flat red hair and laced with scars, crossing his body like little rivers.

“Not much _meat_ on him at all,” the Forsworn grunts in a voice like silk masking steel; “this the Crow who caused all that fucking mess upstairs?”

“Aye.”

The Forsworn looms over Jon; he smells of blood and bone, of wood-spice-smoke. To be the sole recipient of his intense stare has Jon’s heart lurching into his throat and his skin going to ice and then to fire; Giantsbane’s nostrils flare as if he’s scenting him and then he grunts.

“Leave,” he says then, and the guard shoves Jon away. Once their footsteps fade down the corridor, the Forsworn cocks a brow and Jon tries not to swallow his own tongue.

“Not as fun of a kill as I’d hoped you’d be, little crow. Can you even lift a blade?”

“No one is killing the boy, Tormund. Not just yet.”

Jon tears his gaze away from Giantsbane and the Forsworn steps aside with a low grumble. A man stands at the bars of the cell across the cavern, bigger even than Giantsbane; his drooping face is cast in shadows and profound sorrow, not the savagery and bloodthirst Jon was expecting. He’s made like a bear, silhouette huge and lumbering in the firelight.

The King in Rags; Mance Rayder, who was highborn. He ran from the lords of the Reach to join the wild men in the hills, they who worshipped Hagraven half-women and tore their own hearts out to trade the bird-goddesses for eternal life as the Briarhearted or traded their ability to bear children to become witchblades.

“No one will hurt you, boy,” Mance Rayder says, low voice rumbling like an avalanche. “Come. Let us speak.”

Fear makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and he prays it doesn’t show on his face. Giantsbane steers Jon towards the cell, not shoving or hitting at him like the guards, but Jon is still hyper-aware of the Forsworn regardless of his deceptive gentleness. He has hands that could probably tear his throat out in one swipe.

Mance pushes the cell door open and Giantsbane herds him inside; it’s some semblance of a home, with a desk and chair and even a bed that’s made of straw instead of stone, the floor wood instead of rock. Up close, Mance is a Nord carved out of iron; he’s old, at least seventy winters if not more, hair more grey now than brown. His eyes are burdened and weary, that sorrow carving deep into the lines of his weathered face.

He doesn’t seem like a man that has ever enjoyed a moment of his existence, but his presence is every bit as noble as any lord Jon has ever met. It’s a quiet sort of nobility, the kind of nobility that his father carried about him – it was a humble sort, the kind that said he was a servant of his people rather than a hoarder of power. It makes Jon’s stomach clench and his heart falter in his chest to find out the man he always pictured with the fangs of an ice-troll was far more human than he was comfortable with.

 _It is easier to mask our enemies with faces of monsters,_ comes his father’s voice; _but wars are fought by men, and all men have stories._

Mance gestures for Jon to sit, and after hesitating a moment he does, perching on the edge of the bed as the King in Rags takes the chair at his desk. Giantsbane fills the doorway, thick arms folded over his chest and gaze heavy over Jon.

“Welcome to the mine of blood and silver, Jon Snow,” the King in Rags says, and Jon clenches his jaw. “Oh, yes. I know who you are. The bastard of Winterhold, son of Eddard Stark, betrayer of the High King. Everyone in Markarth knew who you were before you set foot beyond the bronze gates.”

Jon grits his teeth, anger spiking up in his throat. “My father was no traitor.”

“You seem certain of that.”

“And why shouldn’t I be?”

Mance tilts his head. “I met your father, once,” he says then, and Jon’s shock must show on his face. “Aye, it's true. He was young, as young as you are. Wide-eyed and self-righteous – as you are. He was with Ulfric Stormcloak during the siege of Markarth, when my people were burnt in the streets and our women raped in front of their children. Your father was the one that found my Dalla in the chaos.”

Jon’s stomach clenches tight and Mance’s eyes pinch with a smile he doesn’t give him with teeth.

“Don’t worry, Snow.” Mance rises from the desk, hands clasped behind his back as he paces slowly to the bars to stand there like a king poised at a window, gazing out at his crumbling kingdom. “Your father was a good man. I mourned him when I heard he’d been executed. He got Dalla and my daughters out of the city, joined with Thonar Silver-Blood in calling for my imprisonment instead of my death.”

“Thonar had a deal with you,” Jon says then, relief swiftly replaced by foreboding when Mance turns to arch a brow at him. “Did my father know about _that_? About the _murders_ you ordered?”

Giantsbane shifts in the doorway. “Mind your tongue, boy,” the Forsworn growls, and Mance holds up a hand as Jon meets his winter-eyes with a stone in his gut.

“Your father sought to save a life in imprisoning me,” Mance says. “But Thonar? He wanted a beast and so he made one of me, Jon Snow. My people are his weapons now, lest they go to the ground, and I am a dog in a cage with innocent blood on my hands.”

“You could refuse him,” Jon counters, “you chose to play this game. You chose to kill those innocents to spare your own life and you know it.”

Mance’s gaze narrows, though not unkindly; Giantsbane moves with another low growl and Jon can taste his burning unrest, though the King in Rags reaches out to stay him with one huge hand on his shoulder. Terrified as he is, Jon refuses to look away from the King in Rags, refuses to lower his gaze or show his weakness.

“You’re a stubborn bastard, Jon Snow,” Mance says then, appraisal in his voice, “you’re lucky I have a fondness for stubborn bastards. Those guards out there – your kinsmen – brought you here to appease me. They thought I would have Tormund rip you apart; counted on it, even.”

Jon’s mouth floods with a bitterness and he shoots a glance to the flame-haired Forsworn, sharp nose flared like a wolf scenting for blood again.

“You’re stubborn and think all you know is right. I would be curious to see what would happen if you knew the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Aye.” Mance squeezes Giantsbane’s shoulder. “Take him to Braig. Don’t worry, Jon Snow. Tormund might hate you for my sake, but he’ll make sure no one will hurt you. Not until I say so.” 

The King in Rags returns to his chair and reaches for his quill, a clear dismissal that Jon is both grateful for and mildly resentful of as Giantsbane stalks towards him. Jon rises before the Forsworn can make him, mustering every ounce of courage he has to stand his ground.

Giantsbane looms over him for a moment and Jon’s lungs freeze, his chest full of wool again to be under the direct scrutiny of his gaze. He believes he’s loyal to Mance but really wouldn’t put it past him to rip him to pieces should he try anything.

_Live, little wolf._

“You like to fight, little crow,” the Forsworn says then, leaning back. “I can smell it on you. Let’s see if you pick the right side to fight for.”

With that, Giantsbane turns and lumbers out of the cell, bone-beads swaying down the long, thick line of his back. Jon catches his breath and, after glancing towards Mance, makes to follow his guard.

The mines are sprawling, far bigger than Jon ever imagined. Giantsbane seems to know them like the back of his own hand, never hesitating on the next turn. He walks the halls like he owns them and perhaps he does. His presence silences prisoners they pass, sends orcs and Nords and Imperials alike shifting to hug the walls. Jon doesn’t doubt water would part before him if he stared at it fiercely enough.

They watch Jon, eyeing him with the same doubt and suspicion the flame-haired Forsworn did. Not all of them are Forsworn, but he knows that they would be loyal to Mance in a heartbeat if he asked; the entire mine is his kingdom, though one trapped by iron and guards that walk the thin line between the Silver-Bloods and the King in Rags.

Eventually, they pass a line of cells in a dank corridor reeking of must and old bandages and come to a little alcove where four men and one red-haired woman sit on barrels. They’re playing some kind of game with rocks, drinking from bone-mugs that look like they’ve been dug out of the ground with the silver.

The red-headed woman looks up when they near and gives Giantsbane a wide smile. Then she catches sight of Jon, and her equally piercing blue eyes widen in curiosity. She and Giantsbane must be related; they have the same sharp features, the same fire for hair – though her skin glimmers like opals instead of gold.

“New blood?” she asks; the other Forsworn turn to eye Jon and Giantsbane grips his shoulder in a rough hand. The young woman eyes him salaciously, and Jon almost folds his arms over his chest on instinct.

“That’s a fucking Crow,” growls one of the men, a bald Nord with a scar running over the puckered socket of what was once his eye. “Why you bringing a fucking Crow ‘round here, Giantsbane?”

The hate in the man’s remaining eye is enough to send Jon’s blood to ice again. He swallows hard, sweat pooling under his arms and down his spine. The young woman’s lip curls a little and one of the other men spits on the floor.

“Is this _the_ Crow, Tor?” the young woman hisses, but Giantsbane holds up a hand and she purses her lips. “ _Tor_ –“

“All of you,” Giantsbane grunts, “out. Not you, Braig. Mance’s orders.”

The man with one eye shifts on his barrel as the others all stand as one, even the fire-haired woman. She stares openly at Jon as she leaves and jabs at Giantsbane’s ribs with a quick hand. He growls, and she skitters out of his reach with a laugh, the sound echoing off the walls as they file out of the alcove.

“The fuck Mance want, then? Want me to torture this one?”

“That’s my job,” Giantsbane says, and Jon tries not to make a sound when his breath catches in his chest. “But we aren’t to touch him – not yet. Mance owes his father a blood debt, so he gets one more chance.”

“The fuck do I care about Mance’s blood debts?”

“ _His_ blood debts are _our_ blood debts,” Giantsbane says, voice edged in steel, and Braig’s jaw ticks but he doesn’t argue. “Mance wants him to hear the truth, Braig. Give it to him.”

 _Live,_ Jon thinks, throat aching as Braig rises from his barrel and steps around the table to loom over him. Giantsbane puts a huge hand to Braig’s chest, giving him a warning look, and Jon refuses to bow his head as the man’s remaining eye scours his face.

_“Why?”_

“Men with more blood on their hands have found refuge with the Forsworn,” Jon says then, and both men regard him then; Giantsbane with intrigue, and Braig with simmering fury. “I spared your man when he came to kill me in the street. Tell me why I should be proud of that mercy instead of regretting it.”

“You have a quick tongue, Crow,” Braig snarls, “you’d do well to keep it behind your teeth while you still have them.”

“Braig,” Giantsbane warns again, and this time his voice cracks like a whip. “Tell him or I’ll pull it out of you myself.”

“Tell him?” The Forsworn spits at Giantsbane’s feet. “Tell him how they took our land and our women, took our city and burnt our men in the streets? How _Thonar fucking Silver-Blood_ let my little girl beg him for her papa’s life, let her pledge her little heart to the mines and then _sent her head rolling_ down the steps of the stone palace and threw me into his silver-pit anyway?”

Braig steps closer then and Jon’s heart clenches with his words, lungs utterly void of air as the Forsworn leers down at him, his remaining eye glittering with furious tears. He reeks of stale sweat and sour ale, of metal and salt.

“You seek refuge and _freedom_ , Crow? Welcome to it. They’ll kill you, too. My little girl was eight winters when she died for it. How long will you make it?”

And then the Forsworn is gone, leaving Jon numb where he stands. He tries to catch his breath, tries to quiet the riot of his heart; he’d known Thonar was far from a good man, but Braig’s tale sinks into the marrow of his bones and burns there.

And his father – his _father_ was _there_. His father was with Ulfric Stormcloak when he took back Markarth. Did he know? Did he see the butchering of a child, watch her little head roll down the steps?

“Braig’s been here twenty years,” Giantsbane says then, and Jon had almost forgotten the Forsworn was there. He sidles to sit on one of the barrels and props his hands on his knees, blue eyes flickering up to Jon’s face. “Longer than any of us. His is just one story but all the rest are the fucking same.”

“What’s yours?” Jon asks, and Giantsbane’s face shutters.

“Forsworn I was born, Jon Snow,” he says grittily. “It’s been nothing but Oblivion from my first fucking breath. Doesn’t fucking matter what the story is, the suffering is all the same. The Silver-Bloods took our land, spat on our gods and took us to bleed the silver from our own earth for them.”

Jon sucks in his lip, tasting the blood still caked there. His heart is heavy in his breast, spine aching and body so exhausted; he can barely wrap his mind around the whirlwind that began when he found Eltrys’ body in the shrine.

“You didn’t seek refuge with us, little crow. I’m big but I’m not stupid.” Giantsbane tilts his head, gaze as fierce as fire. “But you’re just the same as any of us now. Aye, we murdered for Thonar. But if we didn’t, our people would suffer. You suffer for the Silver-Bloods and their greed now, suffer just like us. The pain is all the same down here, Jon Snow.”

There are scars on his chest, scars that each have stories. Jon stares at them now, stares until Giantsbane rises from his seat and lumbers towards him.

“Mance wants you with us to repay the debt he owes your father,” he says lowly. “We’re not long for this place, Jon Snow. You didn’t come to us seeking refuge, but you can still find it. Just know one thing.”

He’s close, so close Jon can see the threads of silver in his bright blue eyes. An overwhelming smell of wood-spice-smoke washes over him and a strange thrill rushes up Jon’s spine when Giantsbane growls, “if you betray us, I’ll rip your guts out through your throat. Understand me, little crow?”

His hand presses to Jon’s chest, huge and warm, and Jon bites his tongue to keep from saying something spectacularly foolish. Giantsbane steps around him then and Jon is left alone in the alcove, his heart heavy and his eyes full of dirt, a choice to make clutched between his bloodstained hands.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-The Forsworn Conspiracy questline in Markarth.  
> The wildling/Jon Snow storyline fit too well into this i'm still shook  
> yes i did name this after a fall out boy song


	2. Power is Power (movement I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> not today, jon snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xoxo

His sleep is restless, broken apart by shouts echoing down the mine shafts and the endless rattle of work and laughter. Jon finds a small nook to curl into when he grows too exhausted to stand, close enough to Mance’s cavern that Giantsbane will hear if anyone tries to assault him but far enough he’s sure he’s not being watched.

Giantsbane's ominous words and Braig’s tale cling to Jon, make his bones heavy and his heart twist up into knots. He knows, logically, that this is a war – one that’s been going on for far longer than he’s been alive, perhaps even before his father was born, or his father before him. War is ugly on all sides, but what Thonar Silver-Blood has done… Enslaving the Forsworn, keeping them as dogs in his mines for his greed and pride…

It sits sideways in Jon’s chest. He thinks back to the day in the market when Marget had been murdered, out in the streets in broad daylight; Jon had been the one to get to Weylin first, had been the one to shove a knife between his ribs.

His first kill. He’d acted on sheer instinct, some other force taking him over.

“For the Forsworn,” had been Weylin’s last choking words, a fire in his eyes that Jon had only ever seen in the preachers who still clung to the forbidden Talos. Jon had watched that fire die out. He’d felt it go out.

Thonar had made Mance send Weylin to stop Marget from sticking her nose into his business. Thonar had made Mance send Dryston to stop Jon from doing the very same. And he’d done it – he’d done it, Jon thinks, perhaps with the memory of an eight-year-old girl’s head rolling down the palace steps still sharp in his mind.

The mere thought sends a shudder down Jon’s spine. The Forsworn spread far and wide across the Reach; how many more children would Thonar send to the grave if Mance wore out his use? How many more children, innocent men and women? Thonar was less of a rival lord and more of a slave-master – no, Jon thought – he was absolutely a slave-master, no way around it.

The 'mindless savages' the Crows and Silver-Bloods spat on were _not_ the beasts Jon had been told of. They didn’t have the yellow eyes of Hagravens or the claws of ravens; they didn’t have feathers growing from their skin or fangs jutting down over their chins. They were not beasts, and his father – his father had seen something worth saving in Mance, even if his attempt to spare the King in Rags’ life ended in his enslavement.

Ned had gotten his woman out. His children. His father, who was more loyal than any man he’d ever known.

_We’re not long for this place._

He opens his eyes. The ceiling above him is dark and the air clings to him like snow-burnt skin.

_Live, little wolf._

Jon runs a hand through his hair and pushes out of the alcove, his aching muscles protesting as he unfurls from his tight fetal curl. The choice settles deeper into his belly as he winds through the corridors, trying to remember the path to Mance’s ragged court. Forsworn linger in the halls here and there, watch him as he goes, and Jon tries not to bow his head when their eyes catch his own.

A wolf does not look away, because then the predator knows he’s weak. Jon steels himself as he steps down into the vast chamber where the King in Rags awaits and a familiar pair of blue eyes cuts through the gold-lit dark.

“The little crow comes flying back.” Giantsbane kicks away from the wall – and Jon wonders if the Forsworn sleeps – to meet Jon halfway. “Your first night was peaceful as it could be, eh? You’ve us to thank for that.”

“When you said you weren’t long for this place,” Jon starts, and Giantsbane arches a brow, “what did you mean?”

The Forsworn sways close; his gaze is as intense as it’s ever been, and he holds it tight between both fists, lifting his chin and standing his ground. Giantsbane’s lips twitch and he nudges Jon’s chin with a curled finger, huffing in something approaching disbelief.

“I’ve a job for you, little crow,” he says lowly. “You do well, and I’ll tell you. Mance has put you under my watch. You betray us, it’s on me. You choose to fight for us, and your victories become mine.”

He reaches back and Jon tenses for a moment when he produces a sharpened bone-shiv. The Forsworn flips it with ease, catching the blade between his fingers with a deftness Jon hadn’t expected from one so big, and offers it out to him hilt-first. Slowly, Jon takes it, and Giantsbane’s grin is sharper than the bone.

“Man named Grisvar hides somewhere in this fucking pit,” the Forsworn murmurs. “Tried to take a bite of my kin. You find that cunt and put this through his eye, and I’ll vouch for you. Prove your worth to me, little crow, and you’ll not be long for this place, either.”

“You want me to assassinate a man?’

“A _dog,”_ Giantsbane snarls. His lupine nose curls as he ducks in so close, and Jon doesn’t even dare breathe. “I _forgot,_ little crow; you’ve only ever served beasts who tried to take what wasn’t theirs. You’re amongst men now but know this – you could so easily be thrown to those beasts, and it doesn’t matter to them whether you’ve a cunt or a cock or a bloody hole. They’ll take you, Jon Snow, and they won’t leave much behind when they do.”

Jon’s throat thickens. He sucks his teeth and looks down to the shiv; he’s killed better people for less when he thought it was the right thing. Now, faced with something far more righteous, he feels something ignite beneath his breast that sends a fission through his blood and he raises a brow at Giantsbane.

“Where do I start?”

The grin he receives in return makes his stomach flood with wings.

Grisvar, in the end, isn’t much of a hunt. Jon follows Giantsbane’s directions through the main pit with the cells reeking of sex and the bones piled along the walls and down a far corridor marked by a torch adorned by severed fingers.

_Cunt’s tall, taller than you,_ Giantsbane’s voice reminds him as he wanders through the sea of mining prisoners, invisible chains of silver wrapped around their hands; _got a scar over his rat-bearded mouth. Ask any Dunmer or even the fucking Khajiit for him; he’s friend to none but his own kind down here._

Jon holds his heart in his mouth as he follows the line of an Argonian’s claw towards where a lean, lanky man huddles in a corner of a cove, his pick-axe beside him as he stares down at his fingers.

_Kill that cunt, Jon Snow, you’ve not only my sword, but my promise you’ll make it out of this fucking pit._

He’d said it with fire in his voice and Jon had believed it. There was nothing left for him to lose; he’d thought he was going to die when they brought him to Mance but the King in Rags and his guard had given him not one chance, but two. Jon was allowed to live in chains or prove his loyalty and run free with the men who the Silver-Blood called beasts.

_I was curious to see what manner of man you were once you knew the truth._

A truth weighed, balanced, and found horrific. Jon nears Grisvar with Braig’s story between his ears and his blood between his teeth and the lanky man looks up with watery, leaking eyes.

“Fuck you lookin’ at?” Grisvar slurs; he reeks of Skooma and moon-sugar, tacky sweet, unhealthy sweat clinging to his sallow brow. Jon curls his fingers around the hilt of the bone knife, and thinks of sunlight.

“A dead man,” he replies, and Grisvar only has time to let out a panicked shout before Jon goes numb and the shiv bites through the lanky man’s ribs. Once, twice, three times – Jon catches the body and staggers back, blood dripping down over his shoulder and soaking through his linen tunic.

His heart beats loud as a drum.

_Live, little wolf._

He shoves Grisvar away, not looking at his eyes, and the man sags to the ground, lips gone crimson as he drowns in his own lifeblood. Several prisoners halt their work or their rambling to watch as Grisvar dies, and Jon steels himself for a retaliation that doesn’t come.

“Giantsbane finally got himself a new hound, it seems,” a Khajiit remarks, slinking out from the shadows.

Her yellow eyes sweep over Grisvar in clear delight, and when she purrs it echoes through the cavern. She looks then to Jon, and her sharp teeth glint when she gives him the Khajiiti version of a grin. For some reason, Jon doesn’t feel this kill like he did the others.

_You’re allowed to fight for yourself, too, Jon Snow._

Jon tosses the bloodied shiv down at Giantsbane’s feet when he sidles back into Mance’s court. He’s got it streaking down his chest, over his fingers, and the Forsworn regards him with a glimmer in his blue eyes that makes his heart twist in his chest, though not out of fear.

Mance sets aside his quill when Giantsbane opens the cell door and offers out the shiv. The King in Rags takes it, eyes it with one imperious brow arched high, then looks to Jon, bloodied and moments away from showing his teeth.

“You vouch for this one, then, Tormund?” Mance asks with a grave seriousness.

“My enemy is dead,” Giantsbane answers, “by his hand. Aye, I vouch for the little crow.”

The King in Rags tilts his head. “Not an endorsement to take lightly, Jon Snow.”

Jon glances to Giantsbane and the Forsworn cocks a brow.

“No,” Jon says; “don’t think anyone’s ever enjoyed publicly admitting to being on the side of a bastard before.”

Giantsbane snorts, shaking his head, but his smirk is oddly fond. Strange, Jon thinks, as the man had threatened to rip his guts out just the night before.

“You’re with the men of the Reach, now, Jon Snow.” Mance sets the shiv on the desk with a strange reverence, and Jon supposes he should; it’s the mark of a pact, one signed in blood taken and blood given. “We don’t have bastards.”

Mance rises from his seat and crosses to the bars of his cell. After a long, suspenseful silence, the King in Rags turns and addresses Giantsbane.

“Tormund.”

“Aye.”

“Gather them, old friend,” he says. “It is time.”

The simplest declaration and it feels like he’s spoken aloud from one of the ancient Scrolls. Jon’s stomach swoops when Giantsbane’s expression goes downright feral, eyes dark as pitch, and then he’s moving swiftly from the cell and vanishing down a nearby hall. A grating roar comes, deep and gritty as a sabre cat’s, and the hair on Jon’s forearms stands on end.

“Your luck is extraordinary, Jon Snow,” Mance says as hoots and answering shouts begin to ring down the corridors. It’s as if Cidhna Mine is igniting, and Jon feels the thrill of it down to the marrow of his bones. “The Gods must want you to live very badly. Very badly indeed.”

It feels too heavy, much too heavy, and more like prophecy than Jon is comfortable with. Mance looms over him as he moves to leave the cell, one huge hand clasping his blood-coated shoulder tight for a moment. He has all the warmth of his father and none of the hesitant doubt beaten into him by the rigid rules of his self-made game. Mance is his father if his father had ever been free he thinks, and Jon sees in that something to cling to.

“And so you shall live, wolf. Come.”

Jon takes one look to the shiv on the desk, and after only faltering a moment, he takes it before following after the King in Rags. They don’t make for the center of the mine; instead, Mance makes for the corridor where Jon had spent his first – and, he thinks with a thrill, only – night in the mine.

The halls are entirely void of souls now, the rumbling sound of chatter and jeering ringing out from beyond his sad nook, beyond the barrels where Braig spilled his horrible tale and Jon thought he’d spill his guts, too. Jon glances back over his shoulder, thinking of the guards and the leering orcess at the mouth of the pit, but no one comes to stop them.

A King in Rags he may be, but Mance is still a King, and this is his domain. Eventually they come to another vast, cavernous room, the ceiling pitched so high it’s enveloped in darkness, and the air here is lighter.

Jon’s ears perk up as his skin rushes with gooseflesh and they emerge around a corner to find a mass of bodies awaiting them, Giantsbane conducting court from a boulder in the center. The Forsworn jumps down when Mance enters, wild-eyed and fierce and feral, and Jon’s gut swells with it when the Forsworn nears.

“My friends,” Mance begins, and a strong silence falls over the two dozen men and women, all of them made prisoners for the want of freedom; “my brothers. My sisters. Too long have we withered in the dark, surrounded by silver we can taste now in our sleep but will never touch. Too long we have bled for Thonar and his conquest, for the Nords who took our land from us, who raped our women and burned our children.

“Too long have we suffered!” Mance bellows then, booming voice ringing off the walls, and Jon finds himself seeking out Giantsbane. He looks like fire become flesh and bone. “Too long have we suffered for refusing to bow to the Nords who took _everything_ from us! It is time for us to take back our freedom, my brothers, my sisters – and we will cut a bloody hole into the Reach until our lands are made our own again!”

A roar rips through the Forsworn that is led and incited by Giantsbane. Jon hasn’t felt this level of emotion in so long, too long, and his body aches with it, tongue still too heavy to cry out even as his heart sings.

_He is not a Stark._ Catelyn’s voice is a sharp barb in his mind. _He will never belong here, and you know it, Eddard._

Jon Snow did not belong with his blood and didn’t belong with the men that Catelyn sold him to. He didn’t belong in Markarth, a city of stone and silver, and he didn’t belong in Winterhold even as he bore the weight of its name still.

_You don’t belong to the wild men, either._ His own voice, but stronger. _There is a place for your voice, Jon Snow. You will find it, so long as you learn to fight for it._

And so, he will. He’ll run with the wild men of the Reach to freedom and he’ll probably bleed for it. There’s an ember in his belly and it becomes brighter as the Forsworn roar, parting like a sea to let Mance through, their beacon to lead them to freedom, the torch in the dark of Oblivion.

“Time to take flight, little crow!”

A huge hand claps down on his shoulder and Jon looks up to find Giantsbane, his red hair like fire framing his face, eyes like the clear sky over snow. The huge Forsworn stays beside him as they follow Mance, follow him through the weaving tunnels of the prison-mine until the air grows sharp.

The walls begin to change from rough-hewn stone into things with edges and precise form. Jon reaches out to touch the ancient dwemer-sung rock as they pass beneath a huge arch cresting the raising tunnel’s ceiling, the bronze set to the grey stone still gleaming bright, and his breath all but flees his lungs when they emerge from the tight tunnel.

“Ever seen a Dwemer city, Jon Snow?” Giantsbane asks, voice low and almost reverent, and Jon, numb, shakes his head as he drinks it all in.

He’s seen the inside of the Understone Keep, but never ventured beyond the throne room that was rich with the gold of the Thalmor. This – this is beyond anything he could have imagined any mortal hands could build. The cavern is a cathedral, with a vaulting ceiling coated in glowing white crystal. Magic suffuses the place and it’s like a punch to the chest, his blood singing out with it.

Every pillar, every walkway, every stairwell is carved from the rock, adorned with bronze fixings; domed huts that were once homes and shops lead to nothing but rubble, and the entire place radiates a kind of ancient sorrow that makes Jon’s heart ache.

The Dwemer ruled the mountains with their grand halls of stone, tinkering with their mechanics and their magics until, legend has it, they stepped too close to the divine and the gods took it all away.

Looking at the remnants of their kingdom, Jon doesn’t doubt they did. Jon veers a little, drawn by an effigy of bronze, and Giantsbane’s hand gently pulls him back to his side, keeping him close.

“Don’t stray,” he warns, voice low. “Some of their crafts still have life in them, little crow.”

He pulls back the sleeve of his ragged tunic to reveal three nasty, knotted scars scoring down his forearm. Jon reaches out before he can stop himself, tracing the raised skin, and when he looks up his discomfort must show on his face because Giantsbane laughs.

“Metal spiders bite hard,” he says wisely, shaking down his sleeve. “Stay with me, Jon Snow, and they won't bite into you.”

“How far does this ruin go?” Jon asks over the rumble of waterfalls; they emerge onto a vast bridge overlooking a river within the mountain, and when the cool mist washes over his face Jon realizes just how thirsty he is.

“We’ve never scouted to the end,” Giantsbane replies, glancing over his shoulder to the other Forsworn, cataloguing his people. “So I suppose we’re about to find out.”

Jon chews his lip. “How long were you there?”

“Long enough, little crow.”

“As long as Mance?”

“No.”

He wants to press for more but doesn’t, not when he glances to Giantsbane’s face to find it shuttered and shadowed. Whatever Jon’s suffered, he’s certain the Forsworn has suffered far worse, so he stays silent and mulls over what exactly he’ll do once he and the others reclaim their freedom. Where he’ll go, what he’ll do.

He can’t go back to Winterhold; even if he’s certain Robb would take him back with open arms, he doesn’t want to ever be under the scrutiny of Catelyn’s gaze ever again or the lash of her cruel tongue. In her eyes, he would have failed, and while he thinks what he’s done is right, none but the free folk surrounding him would ever see it that way.

Perhaps he could go to Whiterun. The Jarl was always kind to him when he was a boy, and it seemed like a soft sort of place. The Companions functioned out of Whiterun, he could join their ranks, protect the people of Skyrim as best as he was able. They were legends across the land, known for birthing heroes more often than they put them in the ground. If he could prove himself, he’d do well there. He’d make sure of it.

That thought bolsters him a bit, settles his nerves as he follows the Forsworn through the Dwemer tragedy surrounding them. He could cut his hair, find some Khajiit to dye it, even. It would be easy to vanish from this city of stone and never be known by any but his fellow warriors ever again.

Time passes strangely underground and Jon’s daydreaming carries him through the entire ruin until they hit a tunnel that burrows through the mountain. The air keeps getting lighter and lighter and Jon’s heart jumps when he finally, finally sees the point of gold at the very end of their escape path, gleaming over the heads of the men and women in front of him.

Murmurs of excitement ripple through the Forsworn. Giantsbane grips his shoulder and then he’s moving through the crowd to reach the King in Rags; Jon is quick to follow in his wake, feeling tetchy and cagey and wanting nothing more than to turn his face to the free and open sky.

The excitement drains as quickly as it came when he emerges from the tunnel behind Giantsbane. The wild, rocky highlands of the Reach spread out before them, but blocking their trail to freedom is the entire host of the Silver-Blood’s mercenaries. Jon, with a sour taste on his tongue, understands why the free folk call them Crows.

They look like the death-birds, all black, eyes hard and almost lifeless. In the middle of the host of a hundred or more men is Thonar Silver-Blood himself, and he lifts his chin as Mance slows to a halt down the rocky slope leading down from the cavern. It’s quite possibly the worst spot to be pinned down – they’ve got a narrow escape behind them and no way over the walls of the craggy, mossy valley above them.

Thonar’s eyes, hard as agate, flicker to Jon and he swallows hard.

“Betrayal must run in your blood something fierce, boy,” he calls. “It’s alright. We all have our curses to bear, don’t we?”

Jon bites his cheek as Thonar sidles forward, gleaming in his hardened leather armor. He spreads his arms amiably, as if addressing a room of rowdy friends.

“You can have a second chance, Jon Snow,” Silver-Blood says then. “You can come back, no harm, no foul. We can forget about this. I’m a merciful man – isn’t that right, your _Majesty?”_

The Nord turns his gaze to Mance with a greasy smile, showing his yellowing teeth. Jon’s stomach turns. Giantsbane leans in close then and Jon both calms and feels his nerves spike when he speaks in his ear.

“He’ll kill you the moment you get close.”

“Betrayal seems to be more of a plague than we thought, Mance,” Thonar says then, and Jon stays firmly planted where he is beside Giantsbane as he feels the air around them grow thick in the way only an oncoming battle can be. “One of your men told me your little plan. It was a good one; honestly, I thought the old ruins would finish you before you got here.”

“The ruins are part of the wild, Thonar,” Mance says, finally breaking his stoic silence. “They care for us in a way you could never understand.”

Thonar snorts then.

“What will we do now, Mance Rayder?” he calls. “You’re all unarmed. Would you sacrifice your people just for your chance to run?”

A pause. Jon slides a hand over where he’s got the shiv tucked into the hem of his trousers.

“No,” Mance says. “But I knew you would never miss a chance to see me fall; you are a proud man, and I told you once it would be the death of you and I meant it. You never should have come here, Thonar Silver-Blood. To the open and the wild, to the land that sings with our blood. If I am to die, you will die with me.”

And the land does sing. For a moment, the earth beneath them actually seems to shake, and Thonar’s smile begins to fade as a feral, savage shriek pierces the air. More begin to rise with it, and then – and then there are bodies dropping from the crags like assassins from the dark and more come pouring through the open end of the valley behind the Crows, at least seventy strong.

_Not enough,_ Jon thinks despairingly, _even with their magicks, they don’t have enough._

Forsworn swarm the valley, descending like the true birds of prey, and Jon’s barely caught his breath when Thonar roars, “get the _fucking_ King in Rags!” and the Crows _scatter._ It happens faster than Jon ever though it would, the unfurling of a battle. Giantsbane roars and grabs a rock, launching it at the nearest Crow as the Forsworn prisoners do very much the same, leaping to protect their King.

Jon’s throat burns. These are his former brethren that attack them now, and though the man they follow is no better than a petty daedra, they were still the ones he trained with. To see their faces twisted with such horrible malice – to think it was once his own face that looked like that – it’s enough to paralyze him.

And then, one of the Crows comes hurtling for him, and Jon’s body decides to survive. He ducks under the swing of the steel and, bone-shiv clutched tight in his hand, he pops back up behind the man – _Ryckard, only just twenty –_ and brings the makeshift weapon down into his shoulder. He cries out, sword dropping, and Jon kicks it towards Mance, who wields a bloodied rock in one huge hand.

“ _Go!”_ he barks, and the King in Rags – to his surprise – does. He drops the rock and takes up the sword, sticking it right into an oncoming Crow’s gut.

A fist slams into Jon’s jaw and he staggers, listless. Ryckard, teeth bared and tears in his eyes, rips the bone shiv from his shoulder. With a bellow he slashes wildly at Jon, sending him stumbling over the ground. His heart flutters madly in his chest and he shouts when the bone bites at his forearms, flung up in the last moment to protect his face.

“You _fucking cunt!”_ Ryckard roars, pushing his advance, and Jon can only stagger back over the rock and moss, protecting his body as much as he can, forearms and hands growing red. “ _Traitor!”_

There’s no point in speaking. Jon grits his teeth as other Crows begin to flock, drawn by their companion’s shouting and the idea of tearing into Jon’s flesh, the idea of tasting his blood. He can hear Giantsbane’s roar in the riot the battle’s become, and Jon thinks of shouting for him, but he _can’t_ ; he can’t get a single sound to leap to his tongue as he’s surrounded by five Crows, sequestered against the edge of the valley.

_Live, little wolf._

_I’m trying,_ Jon thinks, and his nose curls.

 He’s ready to go down fighting, refuses to die like his father on his knees. He raises his fists, blood on his lip and wounds seeping down his arms – and then there’s a stench of ozone, like the sky before it rains, and a bright light blinds him as Ryckard  _screams._ It’s the scream of a death by magic, piercing and nearly inhuman as lightning surges through Ryckard and burns the air around him.

Jon jerks to the side when the red-headed Forsworn girl who shines like opals shrieks and rams into another of his former companions, biting through an ear with her teeth. She carries the aura of magic around her, carries it as naturally as breathing, and Jon can only make himself keep breathing as he drinks in the burnt, gnarled body on the ground.

A blade hits the ground and Jon is on it like a wolf on weak prey. He ducks under an arc of steel and twirls, putting the full force of his weight behind his strike. One of the Crow’s arms hits the ground and then the red-headed Forsworn brings her bow down into his head with a brutal strength Jon’s only ever seen in the witchblades of her people.

The fever of the fight surges through him. Jon can _taste_ the ozone now as magic cracks through the air, rare enough it can’t turn the tide but still a force to be reckoned with. He wonders if Giantsbane can cast out through Nirn and beyond for the magic of the High elves, wonders if he can cast fire as red as his hair.

“They cut you up good, Snow,” the girl says once the five Crows are all corpses at their feet. “Here, hold still.”

But even as healing light encompasses one of her hands, there’s a horrible, wrenching roar that makes Jon’s spine itch and his teeth ache. The girl’s face goes whiter than the magic in her hand and she screams “ _Tor!”_ before turning on one heel and bolting for the writhing riot in the middle of the valley.

Jon curses but he’s quick to follow her through the churning mess of bodies, Crows and Forsworn, countrymen spilling the same blood over the earth. He roars and slams the hilt of his blade into familiar face after familiar face, sticks the steel through guts he’s heard laugh, and keeps running after the billow of red hair ahead.

Ozone sucks the air away and lightning cracks through ahead, blinding Jon briefly again. The girl’s shrieks are as piercing as any Hagraven’s, tinged now with a furious agony that makes Jon’s blood go cold.

He skids to a halt when he finds the reason why; Giantsbane is down, has three arrows in his back and clutches a bloodied gash over his stomach. He’s still upright, which is a feat in itself, teeth bared and red, but he’s quickly going from Altmer sun-touched gold to Nord white. The girl falls to her knees beside him and he attempts to shove her away.

“You need to go!” Giantsbane growls, and the red-headed girl smacks his hand away from where it fists in her tunic. “Leave the weak, Ygritte!”

“Keep them off me!” the girl shoots over her shoulder, ignoring it when Giantsbane snarls. “Keep them the _fuck_ off me!”

“Get her _out,_ Snow! _”_

“If you touch me I’ll turn you to ash,” Ygritte snarls. “There is no _out!”_

Jon meets Giantsbane’s blue eyes for a moment and they’ve gone glassy; a Crow nearby roars, “get the fucking healer bitch!” and Jon rips his gaze away, twirling his stolen sword as the murder descends.

He’s coated in blood. His grip on the pommel of his sword is slick, slippery, and his arms are growing weak, pain still shivering through him from the numerous wounds he bears. But he is a wolf, and he refuses to die like his father was forced to. He refuses to die anywhere but on his feet.

_Live, little wolf._

A fist grips his throat, but it’s unlike any he’s ever felt before. Jon feels like something is growing in his belly as the clash of steel rings down to the marrow of his bones; it stems from the ember in his belly and flares outward, hot fingers stabbing into his lungs. He grits his teeth and roars out his fury and it never feels like enough, never seems to relieve the pressure or the heat.

It always feels different, when steel bites through skin. Jon’s ribs meet the air and he sucks in a sharp breath, the ember within flaring through his heart. He gasps and the blood comes hot as a fever; when he twists to meet the Crow that cut him, his side sings with impossible pain and the thing growing inside him _lunges,_ a real force that batters against his tongue.

Giantsbane bellows when Ygritte rips an arrow from his shoulder. Another sword hits the bloodied ground, but Jon is fading, and they keep fucking _coming –_ he’s no idea where Mance is, or Thonar.

“It’s almost over,” Ygritte is saying, fast and high, “it’s almost over –“

Another roar comes and it _rips_ through Jon, sends sparks over his spine. A gauntlet strikes his cheek and he grunts, stumbling over a fallen corpse and hitting the ground hard. The world tilts and spins as Ygritte screams his name and he rolls onto his hands and knees, gasping for air.

This Crow is big, bigger than any he’s seen, and he scrabbles for his sword – for any sword as the man advances on him. A pulse of heat surges down his spine and his tongue aches, the roof of his mouth suddenly flush with a piercing pain.

_You’re going to die here, and so will they. So will they._

And Jon has been ready to die for some time, but suddenly it’s not just him that will go to the earth, and Jon – Jon can’t abide that.

There’s an invisible hand around his throat he thinks is death and a constant roar in his ears, but he isn’t sure if that’s his heart or something else. It threatens to deafen him, threatens to beat his eardrums until he won’t hear his own dying scream.

And then there’s another voice, one stronger but still his own, wreathed in gold and jagged as stone, and it whispers, _not today, Jon Snow._

The pain in his mouth blooms, curling down his throat like the coldest water until it turns to the heat of whiskey in his belly. The heat surges through his chest, unfurling fingers around his ribs, piercing into his lungs.

Jon chokes on a full breath as the Crow stalks towards Ygritte and Giantsbane, lifting his sword to cleave through the pair of them. With the last strength Jon can muster he pushes up onto his palms, and then all he can hear is fire.

_Not today, Jon Snow._

It comes like a fever. Jon opens his mouth to cry out, to scream, to shout for a god, any god that might listen, and the voice that pours from him is one that makes his bones rattle and his skin bloat.

It is a whip, unfurling from the very core of him, becoming a thing that shatters the air and slams into the Crow. The power of it breaks him on impact – Jon can _feel_ it, can feel when his bones shatter and the man is dead before his feet leave the ground, corpse crashing through Forsworn and Crows alike yards away.

Jon sinks to the ground as his arms slowly give out, gasping through the throttling aftermath and inhaling dirt and blood and grit. His head feels as if it’s being crushed between two huge hands and his mouth weeps, saliva dripping down his tongue, the raw, ragged taste of copper flooding forth from his sundered throat.

Blood paints his teeth, washes over his lips, and his vision blurs with stinging, hot tears. For a moment, all he can think is, _he should’ve killed me first._

There’s so much shouting, shouting that he can’t discern and doesn’t want to. Jon’s body is horribly heavy, heavy as the dead, and his skull rings as his vision blurs. A horn blares somewhere, and then there are hands on him – big hands, strong hands still red with blood, and red hair flashes in his periphery as a deep voice booms through him.

Then he’s being pulled to a strong chest and kept there; everything smells like blood and ozone, and his throat hurts with a kind of pain that he thinks means he’ll never be able to speak again.

As the world begins to close to him, Jon thinks he hears the trembling roar of an impossible thing, and when he finally, _finally_ sinks into the dark, he dreams only in fire.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote the battle to bad idea by ariana grande tbh


	3. Wild-Eyed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate does love a laugh, does she not?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from the song by london grammar
> 
> this one's short, but heavy. like danny devito.

The little crow sleeps like he’s dead, and Tormund finds himself groping for a pulse every now and then as they make their way through the Reach’s highlands. When they finally stop to make camp, only a day’s journey away from Druadach, he stays beside Jon Snow, watching his chest rise and fall as his body weaves itself back together. He's a lithe little thing, but strapped with a surprising amount of hardened muscle beneath his sunless skin.

Ygritte had done what she could, drained and exhausted as she was; the wounds over his arms will surely scar, already flaky with scabs. His sister had tried to help his throat, but her magic wasn’t strong enough to soothe dragonfire, and Tormund had no doubt that was what sang the power from Jon Snow’s chest.

“Has he woken?”

Tormund looks up as Mance sidles over, dirty still with blood, as they all are. Dirtied, wounded, but unbroken; they are free, he thinks, and it brings a burn to his throat.

“No,” he grunts. “That thing took his soul and wrung it dry.”

Mance kneels down beside Jon Snow, heavy brow furrowed deep.

"The only man I know of who could use the Voice shook the High King to pieces,” Mance murmurs. “It took Ulfric Stormcloak twenty years to master a single Thu’um.”

“Maybe it was a gift from the gods,” Tormund offers, but Mance shakes his head.

“That was no gift,” he says heavily. “It was an awakening.”

Tormund’s gut tightens.

“You don’t think…”

“There’s not been a scale-heart born in centuries,” Mance says. “But did you not feel it, Tormund? The skies sang when that boy used his Voice. Ulfric Stormcloak made the earth bleed with his Voice, but Jon Snow made it shake.”

Tormund looks down to Jon then, with his glacier-white skin and his dark, dark hair, pooling around his head like spilt ink. He did feel it – he felt the rush of force as it swept past him and splintered bone with an invisible fist. Jon’s shout had been a ragged, booming thing, both full and tattered all at once; he doesn’t think he could forget the sound of it even if he wanted to.

It had made the air shimmer. It had made Tormund’s heart _clench._

He’d nearly shattered himself to save their lives. Jon Snow put a shiv between his enemy’s ribs and followed them through the ruins to a possible death and fought until his teeth bled with it. It stirs something deep in his gut, makes his flesh clench too tight to his muscle and the scars over his heart itch. Admiration rushes through him, followed by pride and triumph, as well as something far more dangerous.

“If we felt it,” Tormund says, “then the world did too. The return of a _Dovahkiin_ – what could it mean?”

Mance’s drooping face goes grim as he shakes his head absently, gaze still affixed over the little crow’s face.

“A change,” he says finally. “He is a herald. One of flames and scales and ancient things; we cannot keep him safe. Not from this.”

It plummets into Tormund’s gut like a stone. He looks up at his King as Mance rises, a sorrowful expression burrowing into his lined skin.

“He will be allowed to heal, but then he will need to go his own way.”

“You gave him a chance to prove himself,” Tormund says, “and he did. Will he be any more hunted than the rest of us? Than the fucking Hagravens or the Briarhearts? He saved my life – he saved _Ygritte’s._ You spared him for your blood-debt. I owe him the same."

Mance watches him for a moment and Tormund ever feels like a child beneath those too-wise eyes, eyes burdened by pain for too long.

“Could you change the will of the Gods, Tormund?” he asks then. Tormund sucks in his cheek. “Could you stop the flow of fate? You are ever fierce, my dear friend, but ferocity cannot stop this. It will only bring you ruin. It will bring ruin to us all.”

Tormund looks down again as Jon Snow shifts, his brow creasing as he swallows hard. A whimper comes, and he can only imagine the kind of pain he must be in. He’d been drooling blood for an hour or more, wheezing like he was trying to exhale death itself.

He keeps his tongue behind his teeth. After another beat, Mance leaves him alone with the little crow on the litter and his words pressing down on his shoulders. The memory of Jon Snow’s great bellow still lingers on his skin, the sheer strength that had come just from his tongue. Tormund will remember it for the rest of his days, will keep it held close.

It terrified him – and it _thrilled_ him.

Ygritte eventually wanders over, and after peering at the pretty thing’s wounds she plops down beside Tormund and puts her head on his leg. She yawns so wide her jaw cracks and his chest blooms with a warm fondness when she rolls over to peer up at him through eyes so tired they’re red-rimmed.

“What did Mance say?” she asks quietly. “You didn’t look happy when he left.”

Tormund flicks his sister’s nose. “You need to learn to mind your business, fox.”

“You’re my brother,” Ygritte snips back, “you _are_ my business. What did he say?”

He looks to the little crow, and his stomach goes tight. “Just that he’ll have to make his own way. A man with the voice of a dragon is a dangerous man to be around, Ygritte.”

Ygritte looks at first confused, then somewhat belligerent. “He helped us. He saved you!”

“Aye,” Tormund agrees. “With ancient magic. Magic more ancient than even the Hagravens, little fox. We cannot make him stay, and we cannot protect him.”

He sees the same indignant fire he felt when Mance uttered the same words to him behind Ygritte’s green eyes. His little sister turns then, arms folded over her chest as she puts her back to him and Tormund huffs, shaking his head.

She is young and does not understand.

_So what about you, witchblade?_

Not long after the orange moon rises and the earth goes quiet in the clutch of night, Tormund is dragged from a half-sleep by a soft, hoarse groan. He jerks upright against the stone he’d slumped against, jostling Ygritte, who grumbles and merely rolls off his thigh and onto a patch of thick grass instead.

The little crow stirs, dark eyes fluttering open to catch moonlight. Tormund is briefly arrested by the sight of him; Snow is the only name that could fit this pretty little thing, with his untouched white skin and hair dark as a raven's wing.

“What –“

It comes out gravel-rough. Tormund reaches for his flask and puts it to his lips; Jon Snow drinks deep, then coughs and his face twists, his nose furling with pain. The Forsworn sets the flask aside and Jon Snow runs a bloodstained hand over his face, breathing a little too quick.

“Easy, little crow,” Tormund grumbles as softly as he can, “you’ve just about shouted your lungs from your chest.”

“I…” He watches Jon’s throat work, and his face twists.

“What do you remember?”

“The – the ruins.” Jon runs a hand over his neck. “The ruins. Then – Thonar. With the Crows. You – you were shot through.”

His gaze drops to Tormund’s gut, where the blood on his ragged tunic has gone from red to rust to black as it dries. Jon’s hand is tentative when it pulls the tattered edges of his tunic apart, staring blankly at the whole skin beneath, and Tormund gently takes his wrist.

"Aye,” he says, reaching out to thumb over a streak of blood on Jon’s cheek. Those somber, defiant eyes flicker up to his, and Tormund’s heart turns over. “And then you opened your chest and a force that could topple mountains came out. Have you trained, little crow?”

“Trained – in –“

“You can say it. Denying it won’t make it any less true.”

Jon’s jaw works. “A Thu’um killed the High King,” he rasps, going, if possible, even paler than he was. “I – I’ve no – I don’t –“

“Hush,” Tormund growls, and Jon’s teeth click. “No one is going to turn you over to the damned Empire. You saved my life. You saved my sister’s life.”

Jon glances towards the thatch of red hair in the grass.

“She saved mine, too.”

“Then perhaps she doesn’t owe you, but I do. Twice over.”

“You _don’t,”_ Jon rushes to say, and Tormund feels a fondness unfurling low in his belly as the little crow shakes his head. “I did what anyone would have.”

“You did what no one else could have.”

“I don’t know what that was. I’ve never – “ His nostrils flare, frustration rolling from him in droves. “I’m not anything special. Perhaps – perhaps Akatosh sent it to save us, I –“

“Your dragon-god doesn’t send the Voice once,” Tormund rumbles, and Jon’s full lips purse and quiver, though it’s far from meek. He looks like he’s chewing on another booming cry. “The dragon-god sends souls of his children to men, Jon Snow. You’re barely thirty winters, aye?”

“Twenty-six.”

“You were a child with skinned knees when Ulfric Stormcloak started training in the tongue of dragons. He shouted your High King apart not six moon-cycles ago.” Tormund hooks a finger under his chin. “Don’t fight it. It will only burn you. I don’t know shit about magic or the doings of gods, but I do know that when you can breathe fire, it’s always best to let it out.”

_Is it, Giantsbane? Is that what you tell everyone else?_

He ignores his own sardonic inner voice as Jon bites his bottom lip and his eyes flutter shut. There’s a certain resignation in his face that makes him look both older than he is and so young it makes his chest go tight, and then the little crow is lying back over the litter and Tormund watches as he rubs his eyes.

“Where are we going?”

“Druadach Redoubt. A stronghold.” _And you can’t stay._ “You’ll be safe there, Jon Snow.”

_Weak. You’re so fucking weak._

Tormund can’t tell him. Not now. Not when they’ve just traded words about gods and worse. Jon looks so fierce and so beautiful under the moon, and he shouted so powerfully it broke a man in two and Tormund is _weak._

“Rest now, little crow,” he says, because he’s also a coward. “We’ll be home tomorrow. You’re free now. You’re free.”

Tormund leans back against the rock nearby, puts his back to moonstone skin and whiskey eyes, and knows that neither of them slip away into sleep.

The second day, Jon walks with the rest of them despite Ygritte’s insistence he stay in the 'damn litter'. He’s a stubborn creature, this little crow, and Tormund is already dreading having to tell him he has to leave. There’s something wild about him – he saw it when he stared him in the eye in the mines and refused to cower, stared him down like he was trying to fight with his gaze alone.

Jon Snow carries himself like a man that’s hit the ground so many times it’s become his personal enemy. He carries himself like he walks upright just to spite the earth beneath his feet, and Tormund finds it equal parts fascinating and utterly ensnaring. In another life, he’d've made a nightmare of a Briarling. He can only imagine what the Hagravens would make of a creature like him, imagines him with the braids of their people and the blue war-paint that brought them strength in battle.

It’s a dangerous thought, too dangerous, so he leaves it. He writes it off as foolishness; he’s freedom-drunk, high on the fresh air and the fact that he’ll never have to see the pit he’s been buried in the last ten years again. Trysts were rare and quick things in the mine, things that were tucked away into stone nooks and over too quickly.

They were dirty and foul, were bruising and hateful. There was no movement of souls in the pit, just the frantic need to feel the rush of life for even an instant, and at first, it was enough. After long enough, though, it began to wear at him, until it became a thing he sought only after a fight – rare enough as that was.

Free, he is allowed to want again, and Jon Snow is the most beautiful thing he’s seen since he went underground. He’s strong, understands where the truth should fit around him and moves with it – a man of honor that hid fangs. 

But he’ll be gone, gone faster than summer rain, and perhaps it’s for the best. A man with a voice of a godling – the first children of Akatosh were the mighty scale-beasts, big as mountains with magic in their tongues. Tormund is a Forsworn, nothing more than a wild thing that belongs to the Reach.

Jon Snow meant something to the world; whether for good or ill, he didn’t know. It was something Tormund felt he was too simple to understand, something he was too small to. Who amongst them even had the right to look a _Dovahkiin_ in the eye? Who amongst them had the right to tend to him, or follow him?

A child of a god made flesh, and Tormund was Forsworn.

_A child of gods. Do you know what **they** would do to him if they found him? What your wicked sire would do? You saw the priests flayed alive. You saw the statues burned, the shrines turned to ash. They would do the same to him._

And then, Mance’s voice, haunting and heavy.

_You are ever fierce, my dear friend, but ferocity cannot stop this._

He grits his teeth and looks for Ygritte.

The sun is setting by the time the great crumbling fortress of their home comes into view over the horizon, and excited jitters and chatter breaks out amongst the Forsworn, laughter breaking out free and true for the first time in what feels like centuries. His chest swells with a sudden wave of homesickness he’s been staving off for too long; Tormund finds his sister, walking side by side with Jon Snow, and goes to wrap an arm around her shoulders as they near the home where he became a man, and she was born beneath the harvest sun.

A Breton woman in furs and doeskin emerges from the stone steps sweeping up to the top tier of the fortress' main plateau. Dalla hasn’t aged these ten years, the magic in her veins keeping her young; her yellow eyes are ever fierce, hair thick and still dark as tar.

She has silver tracks down her cheeks and Tormund watches with a full heart when she laughs and runs for the King in Rags – her husband, who has been but words on a page for twenty years. Mance catches her up and Ygritte grins, rushing forward to greet the two young women that follow their mother.

Tormund falls into step beside Jon Snow, who watches all of it with a soft, almost guilty expression. He reaches out to grip Jon’s shoulder, and those whiskey eyes seem to soften around the edges when they flicker up.

He feels the ancient magic of their Hagravens as they near the sprawling Redoubt. It suffuses his bones, lays gold over his heart. The rest of the Forsworn emerge from the wooden huts and thick doeskin tents dotted here and there around the fort, from the carved crevices of the place the Nords forgot that became their home, and Tormund makes sure to stay close to Jon, who’s radiating nervous energy so thick he can taste it.

It’s all but melted into the mountain behind it, this forgotten Nord fort, built in and about it, and Tormund’s breath catches when a bone-curtain shifts at the base of a crumbled tower. He squeezes Jon’s shoulder when the man chokes on a soft curse, and the little crow shifts closer to his side, eyes going wide and a little fearful.

The Hagraven carries with her the power of an oncoming storm. Her long white hair is thick, braided with raven feathers and bones, and her serrated claws are dipped in gold. Opal eyes sweep over the Forsworn and set over Mance, and the Hagraven sidles towards him on her bird-legs, the soft tinkle of copper bells ringing through the air as she goes.

Mance bows his head as she nears, and Rusalka lets out a gravelly, clicking laugh.

“None of that, boy,” she rasps. “Chin up, you…”

Her head tilts as she trails off, and the air goes so still, still enough Tormund thinks it might shatter like glass if he breathes too quick or too sharp. Then, Rusalka’s opal eyes flicker up and Jon takes a step back when they fall over him.

Tormund’s first instinct is to put himself between Rusalka and the little crow, and it takes all his effort not to as the Hagraven creeps close. Her gnarled old face is awash with something approaching wonder, but her nose twitches into a sneer that sets Tormund’s teeth on edge. She is a holy thing, he knows, but – _but._

_Weak, Forsworn. You’re weak. One pretty face and you abandon all you know?_

Jon breathes quick and silent through his nose. All he can do is put a hand to his back as Rusalka weaves in, clicking low in her throat. The Hagraven reaches out and Tormund keeps pressure on Jon’s spine, keeps him right where he stands when she sweeps the smooth backs of her gold talons across his cheek. They gleam in the dying sunlight, as her eyes grow wild and look like twin moons set in her face.

“ _Kiir do yol,”_ she murmurs, and it brings gooseflesh down Tormund’s arms. He can _feel_ the tension in each breath Jon takes, his chest rising and falling heavy and fast. “ _Dovahkiin._ The stones spoke true.”

She looks over her shoulder to Mance, who looks to Jon and doesn’t look away. A murmur rips through the Forsworn, and someone mutters, “ _dragonborn?_ Load of cock.”

“What did I _tell you_?” Rusalka snaps at them all. “What did the stones tell us _all_? You were sent to await the flame, Mance Rayder – child of misfortune and fate. I told you that you would know when it ignited, would know when to seize it. And you _have_.”

Dalla’s brow furrows deep. She glances up to her husband as Rusalka turns back to Jon, shakes Mance’s arm, but the King in Rags looks as if he’s been struck. Tormund can barely breathe as she puts a hand to the little crow’s chest.

“Not the flame of rebellion. A brighter flame. _Yol do dez._ ”

There’s a reverence in her voice now, one Tormund’s not heard before. Her opal eyes drop and then lift to Tormund instead, and she clicks again, her thin mouth stretching as she shrieks and rumbles.

“You ran so fast from the fire! And it found _you_. Fate does love a laugh, does she not?”

The old Hagraven pats Jon’s chest like an old tottering crone, and the little crow’s breath hitches audibly. She turns away then, hobbling back towards her tower as she mutters softly under her breath.

“The fire will find us all, soon!” she calls, not looking back. “The night comes, and fire will come with it! There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Nowhere. Nowhere.”

She curls a hand around one of the bird skulls dangling from her tower door. Tormund slides his hand up to squeeze Jon’s nape and the little crow leans in to the touch on instinct.

“Freedom you have found, little ravens,” Rusalka wheezes. “Now you pay the price for it.”

And then she’s gone, chittering and clicking echoing from within her nest, and Tormund takes a breath that feels like a punch to the gut. Mance’s piercing grey stare falls over Jon, and this time, Tormund does move forward. He moves without thinking, moves to intercept the King in Rags with a low, “ _Mance,”_ that he doesn’t heed.

“You’ll take a blade and what food we can give you,” Mance says, voice inches from a snarl, “and then you will leave this place, and take your fire and your fate with you.”

_Not the flame of rebellion. A brighter flame._

Tormund knows nothing of the will of gods or the hand of fate. It’s too big, bigger than him, but he knows this – Jon Snow is a child of godlings and has the voice of one living in his chest. He knows enough, has heard enough stories to know that one does not turn a holy thing away.

“Mance.”

“My Forsworn will not harm you, but you will leave this place –“

“ _Mance!”_

A murmur rushes through the Forsworn and Mance looks at Tormund as if he’s summoned a host of daedra down upon them. His heart is thundering like a war-drum in his chest, but every instinct in him tells him to fight. He didn’t make it this far without heeding that instinct – heeding it even if it meant standing against his King.

“Tormund.”

Jon’s voice is hoarse, but still strong. He looks around to the little crow to find his solemn eyes on Mance, unwavering, still defiant but at their core understanding.

“I need only a blade and boots,” Jon says after a beat. “And then I’ll be gone.”

A tense silence follows, and Tormund grits his teeth until his jaw burns.

“Ygritte,” Mance says tonelessly, “find the boy a blade. Get him gone.”

Tormund lets go of Mance’s arm as Ygritte glances between them and then, after biting her lip, she moves around them and heads for Jon, dragging him off towards the camp sprawling across the plateau in front of the fortress.

“Have you lost grip on your senses, Tormund?” Mance demands violently once they’re out of earshot. “You stand against me now? After all of it?”

“I stand _with_ you! But nothing good ever comes of spitting on a godling, old friend,” Tormund hisses. “You know it as well as I do. If you were meant to find the scale-heart –“

“Then I was in that pit of Oblivion for twenty years to wait for it!” Mance snarls, “and I refuse to die for it! I refuse to watch my people burn for it!”

“And what if we burn for pissing on a man carrying the voice of a god?” he bites back, but even as he can see Mance working into a rage, a low thrum rushes down his spine.

There’s a moment – a moment before battle or catastrophe, when everything seems to go impossibly still. There’s a moment where the world seems to catch and hold its breath, a moment when the air is too tight and the sky too endless as it threatens to swallow the earth from the horizon on.

Tormund doesn’t hear whatever it is Mance is saying; the next thing he knows, there’s a rippling, terrible, _shattering_ roar that shakes the ground beneath them and then – and then all he knows is fire.

Time compresses around them. Rock and earth goes flying as ash swells up around them and Tormund hits the ground hard, blood swelling over his lip when he bites into it. His ears ring and heat sweeps over his bare arm but doesn’t burn – he pushes up onto his knees as a beast as black as the night soars overhead, and his heart becomes part of his stomach.

The fire consumes the stairs leading down to the highlands from the Redoubt. Dalla’s hair is alight, and Forsworn are screaming, screaming as they burn alive in dragonfire. Mance tries to smother the fire eating at his wife and Tormund staggers to his feet as his mind snaps right to Ygritte, somewhere in the mass of tents and huts to the unburnt left.

“Get everyone below!” he roars, “get everyone under the keep! Get to the caves!”

Rusalka emerges from her tower, opal eyes gazing up to the sky with a reverence he doesn’t understand and Tormund rushes past her as the massive shadow of death sweeps around to come diving back.

The bellowing shriek that splits the dusk is enough to make him want to rip through flesh; it’s horrible, the worst thing he thinks he’s ever heard, and Tormund’s throat is raw as he roars his sister’s name. Forsworn run past him as their Briarhearts rush to the edge of the plateau, hands crackling with lightning he tastes.

It’s Jon he finds first in the mass of tents. The little crow is still barefooted, weaponless, as he stares up at the embodiment of Sithis that hurtles towards them. Ygritte comes barreling out of a nearby tent, bow in hand, as the dragon lands with a clap more brutal than any thunder on the peak of the Redoubt overhead.

_‘Vokul volaan.’_

The voice is like bone grating beneath steel, like an avalanche and a hurricane; the thing speaks with all the ire of a daedra, so hateful it makes Tormund’s skin crawl. Blooded eyes stare down at Jon, and even as Ygritte draws her bow, Tormund grabs the two of them and the dragon’s massive maw opens. The very _air_ around them heaves and the lightning from the hands of the Briarhearts skitters off the dragon like flies battering against glass.

Tormund hauls his sister into the crook of his arm and shoves at Jon when the fire comes. It obliterates the huts, rends through stone, and the heat of it licks at him, worse than even flames born of pitch. Jon shouts something and Ygritte shrieks, kicking out when Tormund shoves her towards a Briarheart.

When he tries to shove Jon into the massive beastly Briar’s free arm, the little crow dodges and rips away from him and Tormund swears as he takes off towards – towards the remaining horses, panicking and kicking in the walled pasture down the slope of the plateau.

“Get everyone to the caves!” Tormund roars at the Briarheart, “fucking get her _out_ , you cunt, _go!”_

 _“Tor!”_ Ygritte screams, and it rips at him. “No! Let me _go!”_

Everything slows down to a drip as Tormund wraps his hand around a forgotten axe and rips it from a piece of wood. The dragon – a _fucking dragon -_ swoops overhead and Tormund sees Rusalka step up onto a low crumbling wall atop the melting mountain fortress. Ygritte’s red hair vanishes into the caves beneath the mountain with the Briarheart – safe. She’ll be safe.

He can’t breathe, and everything is chaos and smoke, and the fortress is crumbling as the Forsworn rush towards the entrance to the caverns. The dragon sweeps down, and for a moment, Rusalka holds its gaze. Then, the beast bellows and the air shakes, and Tormund closes his eyes as the Hagraven is consumed by flames brighter than the fading sun.

_You ran so fast from the fire! And it found **you**. _

Tormund, chest a tangle and heart in his mouth, takes off then, rushing after Jon as the little crow clambers over the stone wall penning in the remaining horses that haven’t yet dared to leap over and run.

“ _Snow!”_

“Get to the caves!” Jon bellows over his shoulder, and he nearly gets clipped by a frantic stallion. “Get back! It’s here for _me_!”

Tormund swings over the wall on one hand and Jon manages to tangle a hand into a mare’s mane. The little crow shouts and digs his heels into the horse’s sides, and Tormund swears as he watches the dragon glide around the flame-soaked Redoubt, ruby eyes zeroing in on Jon as his horse takes the gate at a galloping leap.

“Snow!”

But Jon Snow rides fast across the highlands, away from the burning fort and the survivors as they flee. The dragon shoots after him, and Tormund feels his soul surge with it, palms growing hot and fingers curling in as the thing he’s kept behind stone tries to break free.

_You are ever fierce, my dear friend._

He could turn back. The dragon chases Jon, gaining speed; he could turn back, go to the caves with his people, chase the freedom he’s fought for so long to grasp.

Jon Snow rides away from the Redoubt, dragging death behind him. He means to fight it alone.

_Freedom you have found, little ravens. And now you pay the price for it._

Tormund clicks his tongue at one of the panicked beasts and utters words in a tongue he’s long given up. The stallion he captures whinnies, still frantic, but he’s steady when Tormund swings onto his back and digs his heels into his heaving sides.

_Fate does love a laugh, does she not?_

Hooks in his spine, Tormund goads the stallion into a gallop. The frantic animal soars over the fence with ease, and the taste of smoke clings to his tongue as Tormund chases after Jon Snow, right beneath the shadow of death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sincerely a slut for alduin not gonna lie


	4. Dragon Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Dur fahliil,’ the beast rumbles, and Jon can see those red eyes through the smoke. ‘You did try. Fierce little thing. How good your pain will taste.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so STOKED i love this au sm
> 
> have more  
> title from the quest name in the game kdnjfkks

The instant those eyes set over him, Jon knew.

He can feel them now, burning through his spine as he rushes across the rocky highlands of the Reach. His horse whinnies, her panic palpable; it’s a miracle she hasn’t tossed him yet. Heart in his mouth, Jon tangles his fingers tighter into her mane and brings his heels into her sides, giving a cry as fire explodes behind him, around him.

As soon as those eyes, bloody as a massacre, had set over him Jon knew the phantom of death came for him, and only for him.

Faster than a plague the dragon soars overhead, and Jon tries to hold on when his mare kicks up, shrieking as fire surges up in their path. His back hits the ground and he gags with it, dazed; he rolls down a slight slope and the stench of burning flesh and hair fills the air.

The earth shakes and threatens to split when the dragon lands. Jon twists onto his hands and knees, gasping through ash and smoke as the idol of death lumbers low through the flames.

Theirs is a meeting that is suspended out of time. Jon can only hear his heart between his ears and the violent purr that rolls through the dragon’s throat, deep enough the air vibrates with it.

Jon reaches for the ember that ignited just two days before, but the fire has all but gone out inside him – and the dragon bares its fangs in a horrible grin that means it knows.

‘ _False little_ whelp _,’_ the dragon intones. ‘ _Dovah do not burn. But you will.’_

Several things happen in quick succession, so fast it makes Jon’s head spin. First, the dragon opens his gaping maw, large enough to fit an entire steed inside standing. Jon thinks he’s peering through a gate to Oblivion as flames gather deep in the pit of the dragon’s mouth, and everything reeks of sulfur and brimstone.

And then – a roar like a sabre-cat, clattering down Jon’s spine. The roar rises and rises and then it warps, blurs with a booming bellow that deafens him and sucks the air from his lungs. There’s a blast like the one that had come from his own throat and a dragon as red as rubies plummets out of the sky talons-first.

Jon surges back when fire explodes around the black dragon, watches with stinging eyes as the two beasts tangle in the midst of the flames. It becomes an avalanche in the midst of an earthquake, and Jon thinks, for a moment, that the world might be ending.

‘ _Dovahkiin!’_ It shakes him to the core; the voice of the ruby dragon is just as powerful as the black one’s had been, but more robust – it’s almost human. ‘ _Bovul! Ru, bovul!’_

“ _Jon!”_

He whips around, lungs aching, eyes burning, just as Giantsbane hurtles out of the smoke on a wild-eyed stallion. The Forsworn throws out a hand and Jon bullies his legs into motion as fire booms over the stone. He grasps Tormund’s outstretched hand and hangs on tight as the Forsworn roars and hauls him up onto the stallion, the muscle of the terrified beast quivering beneath Jon’s legs.

They don’t stop; the stallion doesn’t even slow. Jon throws an arm around Giantsbane’s waist as the Forsworn kicks his heels into his steed and pulls the poor beast around the wyrms writhing on the ground, their blood and flames sharp as poison on the air.

He doesn’t make for the Redoubt. The path turns a little flatter the further from Druadach they flee, flying back across the sprawling Reach. Jon hears bone tear through rock and feels it when one of the dragons kicks into the sky, followed quickly by the other. Dragonsong is the only thing he knows, and Jon wonders if it’ll be the last thing he’ll ever hear, even if they somehow escape this.

“ _Tormund!”_

_“I know!”_

Fire touches down and Jon cries out when splintered rock rains over his cheek. Giantsbane swears and the stallion swerves, whinnying wild and high. Jon dares to look up as the ruby dragon tackles into the black one, and the poor beast is small, too small to even hope of bringing the dragon of night to ground.

Still, it tries. Jon tightens his hold around Tormund’s middle and grits his teeth as the Forsworn turns their steed towards a narrow valley carved into the mountains. It will either be their salvation or their ruin, and Jon closes his eyes tight as they fly past the stones marking the valley’s entrance.

The valley widens as they go, but the ground becomes slick with moss and the oncoming night's freeze. Jon’s stomach pitches and rolls when the horse loses traction, though he rights himself with ease, used to the slip and slide of the land he was born to run. Overhead the tangle of the dragons has become a storm, flames piercing the sky as the most brutal lightning.

He tries again to reach for the ember inside him, but nothing comes. It would be a useless thing, he thinks desperately; even if he could call that power forth, all he’s done is shatter a man. It would be like a babe shrieking at stone if he tried to use it against something like a calamity become solid flesh.

When the rock overhead is cut asunder by the black dragon’s horrible fire, it makes a sound Jon will never in his life forget. It is the world ending, at least as he knows it, as a piece of the mountain sinks through itself and becomes a slide of rock.

The stallion shrieks and Jon shuts his eyes. A thick arm comes around him as their steed rears up, and then all he can smell is ozone and smoke. He’s falling, hits the ground, and the air rips open with a sizzling crack to give birth to a tangle of lightning and whipping wind.

One of the dragons screams in rage, and then there’s a huge hand hauling Jon up and a pair of blue eyes gone wilder than he’s ever seen meet his own.

“ _Stay behind me!”_ Giantsbane roars, and Jon staggers back, but he's utterly ensnared as Tormund's chest begins to bleed.

There’s captured sunlight in the Forsworn’s palm and blood blooming over his chest from wounds that open under an invisible knife; his red hair whips around his face as he pulls the storm from nothing, coaxes it into a makeshift wall overhead. A roar of pain rolls from Giantsbane’s throat, but he doesn’t stop, and Jon can only watch in horror as the wound on his chest – a rune, it’s a _rune_ – starts to glow.

The ruby dragon ducks back from the newborn storm, but after a moment of impatient swirling, the black dragon rushes to meet it, snapping its maw at the clouds like it can bite through the magic.

Rain streaks across the ground as thickly as the crash of the tide over the side of a ship. It’s as real as any storm Jon’s ever seen, but it smells like the brightness of magic – the tang of the cold sea and the freshness of a new spring day all in one. Underneath is the current of the elements all mixed into one, a robust stench that Jon can only call life.

And then Giantsbane is dragging him back, and Jon kicks himself into action. They clamber over the fallen rocks and Jon all but falls into the Forsworn as he slips over a loose stone on the slope down. Tormund catches him with ease, one huge hand clasping his own and a thick arm coming around his waist. His blood smells of ozone and light.

“How long will –“

“Not long enough! Keep moving!”

Jon swallows his tongue. The valley sweeps down into a more open plain, with a shallow pool and a waterfall tumbling over the high peaks overhead. He can already hear the storm fading, the clamor of the dragons overtaking the thunder that came from nowhere.

“The falls,” Tormund growls, right against his ear, “we need to get to the falls, there’s a cave –“

The ground slips and shakes as the black dragon touches down to their left, sending rock showering down. Giantsbane throws an arm over Jon’s head and the air goes tight, so tight Jon chokes on it when another crack breaks against his ears and then –

And then they’re surrounded by fire, but while Jon can feel the heat of it, it doesn’t burn. The wounds over the Forsworn’s chest gleam like captured sunlight, and Jon looks up as the ward eats up the fire, until the flames cease and all that surrounds them is smoke.

Tormund lets out a sound like a stuck mammoth and Jon catches his weight, staggering back, panic a fluttering thing in his throat. The black dragon roars in triumph, and it sounds like a laugh.

‘ _Dur fahliil,’_ the beast rumbles, and Jon can see those red eyes through the smoke. ‘ _You did try. Fierce little thing. How good your pain will taste.’_

Jon braces a hand over Giantsbane’s chest, heedless of the blood. He grits his teeth, and utters a soft, “I’m sorry,” as that maw snaps open one last time.

But then – just as he’s ready to sink down to the earth, become nothing but ash, a new voice claps through the air. It’s ancient, a thing that makes Jon think of maelstroms and disaster, of loss and tragedy and everything that aches inside him. A massive shadow comes over them and he stares in awe as the black dragon takes to the air with a shriek that almost sounds terrified.

He doesn’t know what words the new dragon speaks, but they lash out like a real force. This beast is grey as slate, spikes from horned nose to the end of its tail. The ruby dragon swirls around behind it and the black dragon roars, an agonizing sound that makes Jon’s flesh crawl.

‘ _Zeymah nid!’_ And the thing of night and death sounds _wretched. ‘ **Zeymah**!’_

Whoever this new dragon is, the thing of death almost seems to plead with it even as it roars new words that makes the black dragon scream in fury.

Jon doesn’t wait around to see why.

He hauls one of Tormund’s arms over his shoulders and together they make for the lake, and the waterfall pouring into it. There’s a narrow path leading up to the falls, and Jon can see the open cavern – their desperate bid for life.

The dance of the dragons – three of them, Jon thinks wildly, _three fucking dragons_ – continues behind them, and the walls of the valley shake with it. His grip on Giantsbane is slippery; Jon grits his teeth and cries out as he drags him closer and presses back to the wall when the black dragon’s voice blasts into the water, sending it crashing over them.

The tearing of flesh makes Jon want to vomit. Dragonskin rips with a real force. He looks back as the ruby dragon shoves away from the thing of night, leaving jagged red lines over its side. The grey beast sweeps in circles nearby, seemingly hesitant to go in with talons and teeth.

“We’re almost there,” Jon says, as much for himself as for the somewhat listless half-elf he drags with him. He doesn’t look back again – it’s pointless. Either they live, or they die.

The mouth of the cavern is slick with moss and ice and water; Jon cries out when he loses his footing as the earth trembles, and they both go tipping down the slope into the cave. The world spins and Jon, for the third time in what feels like as many minutes, rolls to his back and tries to catch his breath as he stares up at the black ceiling.

Giantsbane groans nearby; it’s the thing that cuts under the roars echoing outside, the shouts and the impossible things twisting in the sky. Jon swallows thickly, ears ringing, head aching, and rolls slowly to his hands and knees.

He doesn’t focus on the fact that the black dragon could bring the mountain down over their heads. He’s got gold-touched crimson on his hands and the wounds over Tormund’s chest still ooze, so he thinks of what his father would do and focuses on the problem he can fix.

Jon strips out of his ragged, ashy tunic and kneels down beside the Forsworn. The rune is big, the circle of it spanning almost his entire chest; it’s not one Jon’s ever seen before, not one of fire or ice or poison. It almost looks deadlier, the symbol in the center ragged as a daedric rune.

Whatever it is, it must be cursed. Jon dips the linen in his hands into a pool near the cavern wall, but just as he moves to clean the wound, Tormund catches his wrist in a gentle but strong grasp.

“It will heal,” he rasps, voice low and weary. “With time.”

“There’s blood all over.”

“Let it linger, little crow.”

“Just – _please_.” Jon clenches his jaw so hard it hurts. “I need to – just let me.”

There’s a long moment, broken only by the echoing shouts. Then, Giantsbane’s grip on his wrist softens, and his calloused palm slides down Jon’s forearm to settle over his elbow. Those blue eyes are so bright, even in the dark, and his red hair looks like spilt fire around his head, and he’d come after him.

Jon can’t even think of it. The back of his throat burns, and his vision goes a little watery, but he swallows it back and starts to sweep the blood away. He’s careful around the edges of the rune, but the Forsworn doesn’t even flinch when he strays too close.

As he gently peels the wide V of his sorry tunic aside, he discovers the Forsworn has small gold rings in each nipple and a huge, swirling tattoo that curves over the meat of his ribs. He’s all muscle, any fat starved away in the mines; he’s made to fight and been made to suffer, and Jon can see it on him.

And he’d come after him.

“You’re a damned fool,” he says quietly as he goes to wring out the tunic, getting as much of the blood out as he can. “Running after me.”

“And you were a damned fool for running.”

“That – thing. It wanted me. Not you or your own.”

“You _are_ our own.”

Jon catches his own tongue between his teeth and meets Giantsbane’s gaze.

“Your King –“

“You _frightened him_ , little crow. But the Forsworn do not forget debts. If we did, we’d be no better than the men that burned us from our home. You near shouted yourself to cinders to save my life.”

Jon moves back to the Forsworn’s side, sweeping away a new trail of blood that trickles over his ribs. His throat is thick, so thick, and he realizes, belatedly, that he can no longer hear the piercing sound of dragonsong outside.

“I killed one of you,” he murmurs after a beat. “Weylin. In the market.”

“Aye.” Tormund grimaces a little as the rune pulses. “And Mance killed many more before he came to us. We accepted him all the same.”

“But I’m not one of you.” Jon watches as one of the edges of the rune begins to knit back together, new skin pushing out the wound. “I’m – I don’t know what I am.”

“A wild thing.”

 _A cursed thing,_ Jon thinks. A knuckle runs over his cheek then and Jon has known this man a handful of days, but he’s been softer to him than anyone that ever came before ever has.

“You risked a great deal to save me. I’d be a fucking coward if I didn’t do the same.”

“The shout was an accident, you know that, don’t you?”

“And it brought three dragons to you. You’re a man with a voice of a god and dragons tangling over you. That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

Jon halts, eyeing him with a thundering heart. “You’re mad, you realize?”

Tormund’s answering grin is sharp, deadly and wild. Jon shakes his head and keeps cleaning the now-vanishing rune. He isn’t sure if he should ask about it, isn’t sure if that’s his place, so he doesn’t. They have bigger things to worry about.

“This should run through the mountain,” Giantsbane says. “Best to go all the way through. Just in case.”

“Alright. Through the mountain. And then I go my own way.” Jon turns away to wring out his tunic again, so he doesn’t have to see Tormund’s face. “My father – he said Ulfric Stormcloak learnt the way of the Voice from the Greybeards. I’ll – climb the seven-thousand steps.”

“A good start. I’ve always wanted to see the Throat – the place the world unfurled from.”

“Tormund…”

“Little crow.” Giantsbane bares his teeth as he pushes upright, and Jon meets those blue eyes with trepidation behind his own. “I followed you into the fire. That fucking night-dark cunt will remember me. I’m with you, Jon Snow.”

After a long pause, during which Jon strains to listen for anymore wild shouts or roars. When he’s met with ringing silence, he slips his tunic over his head and runs a hand through his black curls, ashy and damp. It’s spectacularly gritty, makes his skin crawl and gooseflesh erupt down his spine.

“Would the King in Rags kill you if you went back?”

Tormund tilts his head in a sort of shrug. “Hard to say. He might try.”

Jon clenches his jaw. “You come with me to the Greybeards,” he says finally. “But after that – if this becomes…”

“I don’t think it could get more dangerous than it already is, Jon Snow.”

And he’s right, Jon knows he’s right. He sucks in his bottom lip and breathes in deep, lungs feeling sore and still burning with lingering smoke. What kind of dragon-kin is he, if he can’t even heal from smoke?

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Jon narrows his gaze and Giantsbane arches a sharp brow; he’s been accused of being stubborn before, but he thinks he might have just found someone worse. He rolls his tongue over his teeth and offers out a hand, a hand that Tormund takes and together, they rise from the cavern floor.

“You sure you’re alright?” Jon asks when the Forsworn leans back against the wall for a beat. “We can –“

“It’s best if I keep moving,” Tormund grunts. “I’ve had worse, little crow. Don’t worry.”

 _Worse of **what?**_ Jon thinks, but he doesn’t say it. If Tormund wants to tell him about it, he’s sure he will. They've just outraced three dragons; he can only think of so much.

It’s slow going through the caverns. Tormund takes the front – despite Jon’s protests – but the man taps an eye and says, “elf eyes,” which he can’t really argue. The man can see better in the dark, so he takes the front and Jon spends the entire journey wondering if the ceiling will collapse.

He hasn’t heard a single dragonsong, but he’s still buzzing with adrenaline, ash at the back of his mouth and the memory of those blood-red eyes still burning through him. So distracted, he nearly slips on a wayward stone, caught with ease by the Forsworn before he can even make a sound.

The night has deepened by the time they emerge from within the mountain, and Jon only breathes easy once they have. However, as soon as he sets foot on the free earth and turns his face to the moon, Tormund snarls and throws an arm across his chest.

“Little crow,” he murmurs, tension in his voice, and Jon’s lungs capsize when a huge, ruby beast unfurls from the tight coil it kept in the middle of the sloping path down from the Druadach mountain range.

The dragon regards them with jade-green eyes; there’s a fire behind them, just as there had been behind the eyes of death, but this one is tempered flame. It is no less fierce, but one that seeks to warm the world instead of destroying it.

‘ _Mal Dovah,’_ the beast greets, deep voice rumbling through the ground. It’s masculine, edged like onyx arrowheads, but almost reminds Jon of the way his father used to laugh.

The dragon shakes himself as he rises on his jointed wings, and Jon – Jon feels his soul move when he does, feels his throat go tight when he sees the gouging wounds down the beast’s sides, across one wing.

‘ _It will heal, little dovah. Come to the vulonkrein – come into the moonlight. Let me look at you.’_

“Jon,” Tormund says lowly, but Jon hears it almost as a memory.

The air is still. Jon moves through the dark shadow of the mountain and into the lake of moonlight; the dragon raises his great head and Jon’s stomach clenches.

‘ _So little,’_ he rumbles. ‘ _Mal nuz norok. Little but fierce.’_

His head sways then, and his jade eyes blink at Giantsbane.

‘ _Drem yol lok, Stormcaller. You were clever. Alduin fears the elf-lightning.’_

Jon glances to Tormund, who lifts his chin, eyes sharp as arrowheads. 

 _"_ Alduin.” He looks back to the beast, forearms prickling with gooseflesh. “Was that – the one that came for me?”

‘ _The World-Eater. Geh. I am called Odahviing, mal dovah. You are lucky Alduin was not the only Dov to feel the might of your Thu’um.’_

Jon feels both of the names down in his bones. “And the third?”

Odahviing lets out a trilling click and sways close. Jon can smell the heat radiating from the beast, but beneath is a smell almost like the great hall back in Winterhold, and it brings a wave of sorrow and strength through him.

' _An ally. Fahdon do Dovahkiin. We are friends to the little dovah.’_

“And why is that?” Jon asks. Odahviing snaps his maw and shakes his head a little from side to side, like a pup shaking water.

‘ _Alduin will devour this world.’_ Stomach plummeting to his knees, Jon stays still as Odahviing bobs his snout over him, scenting like a wolf. ‘ _I came from the grave. Nol fin dilon. I do not wish to see the dark again.’_

“What does this have to do with me?”

 _‘Dov and Dovahkiin return as one.’_ Odahviing’s head is massive, as massive as a carriage, perhaps even larger. He turns it to one side, affixing Jon with a single jade eye. ‘ _You must stop him, mal dovah. And I will help you. Nau dii zin.’_

There’s a tense moment of silence, during which Jon feels as if he’s had his feet taken out from beneath him. Tormund stands close behind him, and Odahviing scents the air as he comes close, rumbling low and almost amused.

“How do I know I can trust you?” he asks finally, and Odahviing makes a sound like he’s laughing.

_‘I faced the world-eater, that is how.’_

“Powerful cunt, this night-dragon?” Tormund asks, and Odahviing blinks languidly at him.

‘ _World-Eater. He was the First-Born of Akatosh. Bormahu. Our great father. Alduin sang me from the earth. There will be others.’_

“He – brought you back? This Alduin?”

_‘Geh. I do not wish to see the endless dark again, mal dovah.’_

“I don’t blame you,” Jon says, and Odahviing grumbles, pleased.

 _‘I cannot linger much longer,’_ the dragon says then. ‘ _Alduin will be seeking me. Rok fen du. I will listen for your Thu’um, mal dovah. Make for Monahven. You will find allies there.’_

Jon arches a brow. “Monahven…?“

“The Throat,” Giantsbane says, and Odahviing snaps his maw.

_‘Kinzon mal fahliil. You are quick.’_

Jon shoots Tormund a look, but the Forsworn is watching Odahviing like a hawk might its prey. The ruby dragon stretches out his wings then and makes a series of clicking noises that rumble through the earth.

_‘Be well, mal dovah. Lok, Thu’um. Sky above, voice within.’_

When Odahviing takes to the sky, Jon staggers back with the force of it and Tormund steadies him, watching the streak of red over the northern lights twirling across the face of the moon. Then, Odahviing is gone, and Jon’s breath punches out of him in a ragged, relieved gasp.

“ _Fuck_ me. Talos’ sagging –“

He cuts off, running a shaking hand over his mouth, and Tormund gives a huff of weak laughter.

“We need rest,” the Forsworn says. “And supplies.”

“Rest first,” Jon says hoarsely, and he’s gone numb, too many emotions clamoring through him to create a perfect nothing, “and then… we can face all of this.”

A huge, calloused hand squeezes his nape. “This way, little crow. Keep close.”

Jon does, following Tormund away from the sprawl of the mountains behind them. The vast plains of Whiterun hover on the horizon, down the sweeping, rocky path down from the Druadach’s ragged spine, and the destruction of the World-Eater lies behind them.

He keeps close to Tormund and when they settle down in a craggy nook, Giantsbane leaning against one wall and Jon the other, he prays he doesn’t dream in fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> odahviing has my HEART i fucking love him so i decided to make him part of jon's story as soon as i could dnjfhuefikaljls  
> the dragon conflict is gonna be. bigger. i can promise u that. 
> 
> xoxo


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